Coronavirus contingency: Survival Strategies for Regulated Entities
Managing disruption of operations for monitored companies and government agencies has taken on a new urgency with the pandemic global coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. Entities must now not only instantaneously revise work procedures and patterns but also simultaneously maintain compliance with regulations and legal norms. Emergency instructions and regulations are creating an explosion in at-home work, forcing what at present is a small phenomenon (3.4% of the working US population) onto a largely not-ready economy. Microsoft, Amazon, Ford Motor, CNN, Citigroup, Twitter, and NASA Ames Research Center are just some of the companies that have already implemented work-from-home policies, activated emergency response plans, and ordered stringent safety measures to protect their employees from potentially contracting coronavirus at work.
Regulators expect the financial industry to ensure effective response with “reasonable contingency plans” (UK FCA). “(H)aving employees and financial advisers working in remote or backup offices or from home” while remaining “on the lookout for additional cybersecurity events such as phishing.” is how the US regulator FINRA expects its members to respond. Broker-dealers “are encouraged to review their [business continuity plans] regarding communicating with customers and ensuring customer access to funds and securities during a significant business disruption,” Finra’s recent notice stated.
The instance of the Barclays Plc NYC trading floor is instructive. After a trading staff employee tested positive, colleagues who worked in the vicinity or had meetings with the individual since that time were advised to self-quarantine for 14 days. Trading floors are especially fraught and vulnerable as their reliance on high-speed technology and tight communication complicate the functionality of conducting professional activity in an other-than face-to-face environment. The goal remains of allowing traders, brokers, wealth managers, and private bankers to continue working and engaging with customers and peers from their mobile phones, corporate owned or BYOD- with text messages and WhatsApp chats captured and archived in the firms compliance and archiving platforms.
While many conferencing and collaboration technologies drive and assist remote communication among work colleagues to transcend the limitations of older channels like email and phone calls, the use of and reliance on mobile communication is the primary avenue of today’s professional and commercial activity. In this context, archiving of mobile communication takes on increased importance as the principal means of establishing a credible corporate record of activity.
Having a fully scalable and redundant archiving system for all communication channels is emerging as a critical element for proper corporate and government functioning, including recording mobile messages and WhatsApp communications.
Allowing employees to use WhatsApp poses specific challenges and opportunities, requiring communication policies that cover specific steps on how employees can maximize that tool as they work remotely. More importantly, they should have a solution that can capture and record WhatsApp chats and calls, including the metadata, since this platform doesn’t allow employees to save their communications by default.
Survival Strategies
First and foremost is creation of safe and effective remote digital access platforms and frameworks. Whether the challenge is secure and robust internet access (typically provided by a virtual private network (VPN)), remote work devices, (including Whatsapp archiving and text messaging compliance), or simply webcams, headsets and the like.
Secondly, the organization must provide collaborative access to a range of relevant productivity applications and collaboration tools, like Microsoft Office365, ERP, CRM and other systems. Issues like team chat, enterprise messaging platforms and social networks and web meeting/conferencing tools are effectively addressed with cloud based applications and decentralized work coordination
Thirdly, development of employee remote working skills is both essential and often overlooked amidst the press of the bottom line. With endless toolbox options, collaborators should understand and use the right tools, whether an enterprise instant messaging solution or mass collaboration platform.
Finally, the organization must acquire and foster a remote working culture and mentality. Unfortunately, such a mindset would normally require a gradual cultivation, but certain aspects can be jump-started, like open participation and inclusion, support for digital learning and a spectrum of network leadership
Essential Tool: Mobile Archiving
Regardless of the advanced strategies and toolsets adopted by regulated entities, their adoption of a holistic mobile archiving solution that can record mobile SMS, voice calls, emails, and that has a WhatsApp archiving feature, are essential for an effective and efficient work-from-home policy while meeting their regulatory obligations on data retention. With the right mobile archiving solution, addressing the disruptions caused by the coronavirus outbreak will become more manageable, and companies can protect the safety and welfare of their employees while ensuring business continuity.
With TeleMessage, companies can effectively record mobile messages and voice calls of their remote and work-from-home employees. TeleMessage Mobile Archiver is a set of enterprise messaging solution that effectively addresses compliance, regulatory, and eDiscovery response requirements and which reduces risk across the financial, government, and healthcare sectors.
TeleMessage captures and records mobile content, including mobile SMS, voice calls, and WhatsApp chats and calls from corporate or BYOD mobile phones. Messages are securely and reliably retained within TeleMessage servers or forwarded to an archiving data storage vendor of your choice.
Our mobile archiving products securely record content from mobile carriers and mobile devices for a variety of ownership models (BYOD, CYOD, and employer-issued). With our multiple archiving solutions, you can always find the right tools or blend for your requirements:
TeleMessage offers cross-carrier and international mobile text & calls archiving for corporate and BYOD phones. Visit our website at www.telemessage.com to learn more about our mobile archiving products.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/business/coronavirus-offices-covid-19.html
https://www.sec.gov/rules/other/2020/34-88318.pdf
https://www.fca.org.uk/news/statements/covid-19-coronavirus
https://www.sec.gov/rules/other/2020/34-88318.pdf
https://www.zdnet.com/article/effective-strategies-and-tools-for-remote-work-during-coronavirus/
